"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Agelasts

Charlie Chaplin said, "A day without laughter is a day wasted," but there are those who think even a giggle is sinful.

Warren Jeffs, President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), is in custody awaiting trial for a variety of criminal offenses. A few years ago the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper ran a series of articles on the persistence of polygamy within the FLDS, and mentioned that Jeffs tried to ban laughter among his followers:

People have been warned that laughter causes the spirit of God to leak from their bodies, amplifying an obscure tenet in Joseph Smith's Doctrine and Covenants.

"We tried not to laugh," Draper said. "We wondered 'How do we do this? Is there anyone who is going to make it?'"

There are three passages in Smith's Doctrines and Covenants which discourage laughter:

59:15 And inasmuch as ye do these things with thanksgiving, with cheerful hearts and countenances, not with much laughter, for this is sin, but with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance....

88:69 Remember the great and last promise which I have made unto you; cast away your idle thoughts and your excess of laughter far from you.

88:121 Therefore, cease from all your light speeches, from all laughter.

Someone who does not laugh is an agelast, from the ancient Greek word ἀγέλαστος. Aelian, Varia Historia 8.13 (tr. N.G. Wilson), mentions some agelasts of ancient times, all of them philosophers:

They say that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was never seen to laugh or to smile at all. Aristoxenus [fr. 7 W.] too was a determined opponent of laughter, while Heraclitus wept at the whole of human life.